


One Last Entry

by redknightalex



Category: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Character Study, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-14
Updated: 2011-08-14
Packaged: 2017-10-22 15:04:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redknightalex/pseuds/redknightalex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Horrible's last blog post. Or is it Billy's first?</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Last Entry

He had one more thing to do, one more unfinished task left before things could be called done, a completed chapter, a closed book, and he started on that new phase in his life that he had dreamed about for so long.

But why did it have to feel so wrong? Why did he feel so hollow inside? Why had the life inside of him feel like it was oozing out of his eyes whenever he went to scratch at them. He believed that ordinary people called them tears. If only his mind were with him he'd give them a proper analysis, look at them closely under a microscope...or something. Instead, he continually wiped them away with the back of his sleeve as he looked at the webcam before him.

One more blog to do. One more thing to say.

Billy first looked down at himself, at his plain clothes and simple sweatshirt (it still smelled of fresh fabric softener), then over to a corner, where his new Dr. Horrible costume hung. It was red, dyed purposefully on command by Bad Horse himself, to give him a more evil identity than the white he had always used. White was too pure, too innocent, too unassuming that he needed more presence, more identity, more horribleness. Didn't they know that he had a PhD in-

His eyes itched again. He rubbed at them, hard, with the heel of his palm, until the wetness that had leaked out of them stopped. For the moment. He knew that they would itch again, as they always did these days. Billy turned back to the webcam, having regaining his composure and his wet hands out of sight, laying them anxiously in his lap.

What was he thinking of? Ah, right, his costume, the redness of it, his hatred for it. He hated it because it _was_ red. When he saw it, when he saw what he had become, all he could see was the blood he had spilled, the anger he had caused, the destruction and madness.

No, not just that, it was her blood, Penny's blood, trailing down her pretty dress, swirling over the wounds his Death Ray had caused, that he saw whenever he looked at his new evil villain costume, at his new self with black goggles and gloves. Everything had changed.

He remembered pulling the pieces of the Ray out when she had died, tucking them away into one of his pockets, reasons then he could not fathom, but the blood still dripping from them had stained his white costume. The E.L.E. told him it was a mark of honor, a badge of pride that he should always have and remember, and he knew he would always keep it, but never for those reasons.

He wanted to remember the day that Billy and Penny died. Together.

Just one more blog, one more entry, and Billy would leave, fly away, if only to find Penny and apologize for who he had become. Then, Dr. Horrible would be free to be as he pleased.

He'd be free.

It sounded overly dramatic, he thought, except everything that had happened the past few days had been overly dramatic, as if life was playing a joke on him. Perhaps there truly was an evil puppet master that just wanted him to squirm.

No, now that was overly dramatic. Evil puppet master indeed.

With a quick breath, and another rub at his eyes, Billy turned on his webcam and began.

“Um, last, well, entry on this blog. Being Dr. Horrible now, full-time, I can't really be releasing confidential information about the E.L.E. to the world. That would just be...stupid.”

He looked at his hands in his lap, wringing them, wiping them clean with his pants, and remembered that he wasn't even wearing his costume anymore. He was blogging as Billy, something he had never done before. He looked back at the webcam.

Then Billy should do this right, for once, for the first and last time.

“I'm blogging as Billy. Just Billy. Soon I won't be Billy anymore, just Dr. Horrible, a member of the Evil League of Evil, and I'd just get in the way of, um, me.”

He kept rubbing at his eyes. He wished that they would just stop.

“I became a member of E.L.E. the day Captain Hammer – Corporate Tool, you know – and his, erm, well, girlfriend died.

“You know, that girlfriend? Well, she had a name! Her name was Penny and she was...she was...she was the kindest person I knew. Yes, I knew her. We went to do laundry together.”

No, that wasn't the truth, he thought. Not the total truth.

“Alright, well I started stalking her, at first, knowing her laundry routine by heart and following it to the second. She made me feel something, right here in my chest,” he pounded at the spot with his clenched fist, making it hurt, “and butterflies magically started to appear in my stomach. No one has ever done that to me. Never. I-I loved her.”

More rubbing at his eyes, this time with more anger than before, pinching the top of his nose and inhaling the excess mucus he had. How unpleasant.

“I loved Penny and she n-ne...she never....she never knew. I wanted to use my Freeze Ray to stop time, to find the words to tell her that I loved her, that Captain Hammer was just using her, but things just sort of happened. I made a new ray, the Death Ray, and that's what got me into the E.L.E.: her death.

“If I could do it all over again, I'd have spared her, I wouldn't have killed anyone. No one. I'm not really a killer, not at all. It...it isn't my style.”

His eyes itched again but, this time, he let them be, and then his cheeks started to itch as if the pain could travel down his face. If only Penny could see him now, so broken and weak, humbled and destroyed. Even in his victory he wasn't happy.

“Because I realized something that day. I realized that it doesn't take a super villain or a super hero to change the world, to change the system. It never did. I was delusional in thinking that. Penny was changing the world, by herself, without super powers or by being a genius. All she needed was a pure heart and that got her through it. And she _helped_ people. She _changed_ the system. She moved it, moved people, moved the city and what did I do? I stopped it. I stopped her.

“I was wrong. And, m-maybe Hammer was right. Heroes are still overrated but we can all change the status quo.”

His face twitched, something he hadn't done in so long, and his body started to tremble. His lips were quivering as he turned away form the webcam.

“But I've chosen my path, Captain Hammer chose his, and Penny her's. Maybe Captain Hammer changed the system too, as much as I hate to admit it, but maybe he did.”

Eyes burning now, his voice low and quiet, trembling at the simplest syllable, stuttering at the lowliest word, yet he knew he had to continue. He had to say this, if only for his own sanity.

“Maybe he gave someone a person to look up to and, if he did that, if he gave people like P-Penny a reason to change the system, then maybe he wasn't so b-bad.”

Billy took a deep breath and focused himself. Only a little bit more.

“He was still a Tool though. C-capital T. Now, it's my turn to change the system. This is B-Billy, logging off now.”

He thought for a moment, gathering his thoughts, trying to grasp them from the emptiness of the lens on his webcam.

“I was once called Billy buddy,” he whispered blankly to the screen before hitting the stop button.

Penny called him that. He had a nickname. Not a pseudonym, an evil title, or even a word spat at him as he was being pounded on by Captain Hammer. He had an ordinary, simple, and plainly wonderful nickname, and it was only said by her.

He thought back on it all, on his blog post, on recent events, on what he had said, and came to another, different conclusion. Rubbing at his teary eyes – there, he said it, he cried; were they happy now? – he removed the blog post from his site. No hits on it so far, he had been too fast, and saved the file onto his hard drive for later...for something. What he had said, what he had shown, was for him and him alone. It was his last tribute to Billy, the man who felt something, who loved and was never loved in return. It was the least he could give to a dying name, to a dying ideal Penny had seen in him.

Billy buddy.

Instead, he turned the webcam back on, looked straight at it, and said:

“And I won't feel a thing.”

The truth will out...so they say.


End file.
